ALBAWABA- Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the former president of Yemen who led the country through a turbulent transitional period following the 2011 uprising, died in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday. He was 80 years old.
Hadi served as Yemen’s president from 2012 to 2022 after assuming power under a Gulf-backed political transition following the departure of longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Born on September 1, 1945, in Abyan Governorate in southern Yemen, Hadi began his military career during the British colonial era and later rose through the ranks in the former South Yemen. Following the violent events of 1986 in the south, he moved to Sana’a, where he became a prominent military and political figure aligned with Saleh.
Hadi played a major role during Yemen’s 1994 civil war and was appointed vice president, a position he held for nearly two decades. After the 2011 popular uprising and Saleh’s injury during an attack on the presidential compound, Hadi assumed the role of acting president before being elected in 2012 as a consensus candidate under the Gulf Initiative.
During his presidency, Hadi oversaw the Comprehensive National Dialogue Conference, an internationally backed effort aimed at restructuring Yemen into a federal state divided into six regions. However, the proposal faced strong opposition, particularly from the Houthis, contributing to the political collapse and outbreak of civil war in 2014.
As Houthi forces advanced and seized control of Sana’a, Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia, where he remained in exile for most of the conflict. In 2022, he transferred presidential powers to the Presidential Leadership Council as part of regional efforts to revive peace negotiations.
Hadi is widely regarded as a transitional leader who governed Yemen during one of the most difficult and consequential periods in the country’s modern history, marked by political fragmentation, armed conflict, and humanitarian crisis. His death comes as Yemen continues to face ongoing challenges amid efforts to reach a comprehensive political settlement to end years of war.
